This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either

are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely
coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Sara J. Henry

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random

House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henry, Sara J.
A cold and lonely place : a novel / Sara J. Henry
p. cm.
1. Women journalists—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction.
3. Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)—Fiction. 4. Saranac Lake (N.Y.)—
Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.E5796C65 2013
813'.6—dc23 2012032575

ISBN 978-0-307-71841-9
eISBN 978-0-307-71843-3

Printed in the United States of America

book design by elina d. nudelman
jacket design by alex merto
jacket photographs: (woman) dave o. tuttle/flickr/getty images;
(cabin) ryan mcvay/getty images

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

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 chapter 1

We could feel the reverberation of the ice-cutting machine

through the frozen lake beneath our feet. Matt Boudoin was tell-
ing me this would be the best ice palace ever, and I was nodding,
because of course every year the palace seems better than the one
the year before. At the same moment, he stopped talking and I
stopped nodding, because the machine had halted and the crew
of men was staring down at the ice. Then, in unison, like mari-
onettes with their strings being pulled, they turned their heads to
look at Matt. Their faces were blank, but we knew something was
wrong, very wrong.
We started moving forward. Because this is an Adirondack
mountain town and Matt has an ingrained sense of chivalry, he
held his arm out in that protective gesture you make toward a
passenger in your car when you have to slam on the brakes. But
it didn’t stop me.
Later, I would wish it had.

For the first few months of winter, this lake is an expanse of fro-
zen nothingness. Then, seemingly overnight, an enormous palace
of ice appears, blocks melded together with a mortar of frozen

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 sara j. henry

slush, infused by colored lights that turn it into a fairy-tale castle.

You can wander through it, footsteps crunching, breath forming
icy clouds, and feel a sense of wonder you haven’t felt since you
were a child.
It’s part of the fabric of this town, and the flow of winter is
based around it. Never mind the huge expenditure of time and
energy. This is Saranac Lake; this is Winter Carnival. Up goes
the ice palace, every year with a different design, a different form
of magic. This year I was going to track its progress for the local
paper, with a photo and vignette every day—I thought I’d write
about the homemade ice-cutting contraption, interview one of the
ice cutters, talk to the designer. There was a lot you could write
about palaces built of ice cut from the lake.
As we reached the circle of men, they stepped back, and
Matt and I looked down. What I saw looked at first like a shadow
under the ice—a dark mass, debris somehow caught up in cast-off
clothing and trapped underneath as the ice had formed. I was
wondering why the crew didn’t simply move on to clean ice when
I realized the mass had a shape, a human shape. You could see
something that looked like eyes and a mouth that seemed open.
Right about then Matt grabbed my arm and walked me away
from the thing under the ice. We stopped about ten feet away
and I sank to my heels, trying to process what I thought I’d seen.
Matt whipped out a walkie-talkie and began barking orders as he
gestured the men farther back.
For once my journalistic instincts had shut down, and I had no
urge to record any of this. I could still envision that face under the
ice, as if it were looking at me through a rain-distorted window.
And it was a face I knew.

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 chapter 2

I live in Lake Placid, ten miles away, in a house so big I rent

out rooms, usually to athletes in town to train for bobsledding
or kayaking or skiing. But sometimes a local turns up, and one
day late last summer a girl named Jessamyn knocked at the door.
She was thin with long black hair and green eyes that shifted
as she looked at you. I wasn’t sure I trusted her. But she didn’t
smoke—I’ve had people stare me in the eye and swear they didn’t
smoke when they reeked of it—and something about her made
me like her. She was happy to take the smallest upstairs room, the
one with just a twin mattress on the floor, a child-sized dresser,
and a rod to hang clothes on.
She moved from job to job, but that’s not rare here. Lake
Placid is a touristy sports town with plenty of low-paying jobs,
and people come and go, moving on to Boulder or Salt Lake City
or giving up on their particular dream and heading back home to
the unexciting job they never thought they’d have to take. Jessa-
myn had a quick wit and a sardonic manner, and men flocked to
her. She’d date them for a few weeks, then discard them as if they
were an article of clothing that didn’t quite fit—apparently with
no hard feelings on either side. She partied hard in the local bars
but didn’t bring it home with her. I never encountered a drunken

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 sara j. henry

paramour stumbling down the stairs; her employer never called

because she missed a shift. And, like me, she never got involved
with any of our roommates. You don’t fish in your own pond; you
don’t hunt in your own backyard.
Then she met Tobin Winslow.
I would have pegged him for trouble from the start, with his
frat-boy good looks, floppy hair, sleepy brown eyes, and diffi-
dent manner. It was written all over him that he was the sort of
person who assumes life should go his way, no matter what. He
didn’t have a job to speak of, nothing steady, and drove a rattle-
trap pickup that seemed as much a prop as his Carhartt pants and
flannel shirts. I suspected he’d grown up in a world of crisp khakis
and button-downs and gone to an elite prep school, then partied
himself right out of Harvard or Princeton before drifting up here,
where no one ever asked where or if you’d gone to university.
It surprised me that Jessamyn fell for him—actually it sur-
prised me she fell for anyone, because I hadn’t seen her let anyone
get too close. But Tobin seemed to appeal to something in her in
a way the local guys hadn’t. Maybe she was looking for someone
who might take her away from here. Maybe she was yearning for
conversation about more than ice fishing or carburetors or what-
ever game had been on television the night before. She’d been
steadily working her way through the shelves of the Lake Placid
library, and most of the guys she dated probably hadn’t cracked
a book since high school. And while Tobin may have been play-
ing the role of good old boy, I suspected there was a lot going on
behind that sleepy-lidded look.
But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Tobin Winslow
likely wouldn’t be leading Jessamyn down a path to anything new
and improved. Falling for him meant giving up a big chunk of
herself—although maybe that would have happened no matter
who she fell for. Maybe she didn’t know how to love without giv-
ing up herself. I’d figured that Jessamyn’s flippant manner, hard
drinking, and serial dating had been the veneer she’d adopted to
cope with things life had thrown at her, things I could only guess

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 a co l d a nd l onely p l a c e

at. But it had worked, in its way. Sure, she dated guys who were
completely unaware of her intellect and she hadn’t been able to
settle down, but that happens to a lot of us. She had a life she
could handle and at least pretend to be happy.
But Tobin had changed all that. Around him she dropped her
sardonic edge and became close to meek. It didn’t seem a change
for the better. I didn’t expect it was going to end well—I couldn’t
see Tobin settling down here, or whisking Jessamyn off to the
bosom of his family, wherever they might be.
Tobin would periodically disappear for a week or two—no one
knew where—and while he was gone Jessamyn would show glim-
mers of her old self. But once he came back she’d take right back
up with him again as if he’d never left, an Adirondack version of
a Stepford wife.
And the face beneath the ice was his.

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 chapter 3

The ice harvesters had begun to talk in low tones. I heard Tobin’s
name, so they’d recognized him too. Tobin had spent a lot of time
in the Saranac Lake bars, which were in general grittier than
the ones in Lake Placid, and without the cluster of shiny-faced
tourists trying a little too hard to have a good time.
Someone appeared from the Lakeview Deli across the street,
carrying a cardboard carton of steaming drinks. One of the men
handed me a cup. It was cocoa, hot and sweet, not the black coffee
the guys almost certainly were drinking. This was their conces-
sion to my being a woman, one who had just seen a dead man,
someone she knew, under the ice. Fine by me, because in all the
ways that mattered, the guys treated me as an equal. I’d covered
their softball games and dart tournaments and ice-fishing con-
tests, taken their photos and spelled their names right, so to them
I was okay. And maybe cocoa was just what I needed now.
I took another sip and walked over to the guys. I nodded at
them. They nodded back.
“It’s Tobin, right? Tobin Winslow?” I said.
They nodded again.
“How . . .” I began.
They shrugged in unison. “Takes a while for that much ice to
form,” said one.

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 a co l d a nd l onely p l a c e

I’m from the South, where a dusting of snow means that

schools close, life comes to a standstill, and everyone stays home
until the white stuff disappears. It had been a rude adjustment
to live somewhere so cold that lakes freeze into solid masses that
people walk on, cut holes in for ice fishing, and drive sled-dog
teams across. It took my first long winter here to learn to gauge
the weather and dress in layers so I wasn’t cold to the bone most
of the time.
We stood there, no one saying anything. It wasn’t all that rare
in the Adirondacks for vacationers to get stranded in a sudden
snowstorm on what they had thought would be a pleasant after-
noon hike and freeze to death before anyone could find them. Far
too often a local would drink too much on a Saturday night and
drive off the road and die in a deep ravine. And sometimes, in
the middle of a jobless, loveless winter, someone would write a
note, put his mouth around a shotgun barrel, and thumb down
the trigger. Or go out for a long walk and never be found. Some-
one cried for them, or no one did. Someone cleaned up the mess,
and life went on.
And with all the lakes here, people find plenty of ways to
drown. In winter they’ll take a Ski-Doo out when the ice isn’t
thick enough and go under. Maybe they have the time and pres-
ence of mind to toss a child or grandchild to firmer ice before they
sink, maybe not. Or in spring someone will go boating without a
life jacket and drown under a bright shining sun, in water so cold
it saps your will to keep moving until you give up and slide under,
maybe on the way down thinking of the rest of your life you’ll
never have.
Last summer I’d nearly drowned in Lake Champlain, and
sometimes in my dreams I’m back in that water, cold and alone,
wondering if I’ll ever take a breath of air again.
Matt came over and nodded at us, shaking his gloved fingers
hard to warm them. A police car drove up and a policeman got
out, walked over, and peered down at the ice for what seemed
like a long time. Then he looked up and beckoned to Matt. An-
other policeman arrived, then a rescue squad. They all walked

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 sara j. henry

over, looked down at the ice, retreated to talk it over. Finally Matt
came and asked me if I would take photos of the body before they
started trying to remove it.
When I’d been the sports editor here, I’d covered everything
from kayaking to boxing to luge to snowshoe races. But I’d never
photographed anything under ice, and it was tricky with the sun
reflecting off the surface. I concentrated on exposure and tried
not to think about this being the body of a man I’d known.
After I’d taken multiples of every shot I could think of, I nod-
ded at Matt. The men moved in with saws and began to cut the
ice around the body. I kept shooting. It was something to do, and I
needed to do something. Someone brought me another steaming
cup from the deli, and I gulped it down. This time it was coffee. I
kept clicking.
It seemed to take a very long time to free the block of ice,
lever it out, and wrestle thick flat canvas bands under it to slide
it toward shore. By now a crowd had gathered at the edge of the
lake. I kept pressing the shutter button as the body slid along in its
ice coffin. I saw it but didn’t see it. I let the camera see it for me.
If I had simply heard that Tobin had died in a car crash down-
state somewhere, I don’t think I would have mourned him. But
that dark shape in the chunk of ice sliding past hit me in a way I
wouldn’t have expected. Jessamyn had cared for Tobin, and some-
where were friends he’d grown up with, gone to school with,
shared his rich-boy escapades with. Somewhere there was a fam-
ily who would mourn his death and the extensions of him that
would never exist: wife, children, grandchildren. And no mother
is ever ready for a phone call telling her that her child has been
found frozen into a lake.
The good thing about weather this cold is that tears freeze
before they fall, so you can brush them away without anyone
noticing.
On the shore, paramedics were having a discussion with the
police, apparently adamant that this giant chunk of ice was not
going into their ambulance. Finally someone drove an oversized

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pickup out onto the lake, which always makes me nervous. It

seems to break one of the immutable laws of nature—water isn’t
meant to be driven on, and there’s water on the other side of that
ice, cold and dark.
Every man on the crew went to help hoist the slab of ice and
slide it into the pickup bed. Probably they weren’t all needed, but
wanted to feel they were doing something. Off drove the truck,
to a heated municipal garage, I imagined, where they’d wait for
the ice to melt from around Tobin’s body. Or maybe someone
would chip away at it. There were people around here skilled in
ice sculpting, and I supposed this would use the same basic skills,
sort of in reverse.
Matt appeared at my side, and I was cold enough that I could
almost sense the heat coming from his body. “We’re going to go
to the tavern, Troy,” he said. “Do you want to come?”
I shook my head. I knew the guys needed to unwind before
they went home, where their wives and children would want to
hear the story. This would be told and retold in years to come,
an almost apocryphal tale to keep kids from venturing too far on
thin ice. It would be an easier story to tell, I thought, if you hadn’t
been there, if you hadn’t seen Tobin’s body being sawn out of
the lake. If you hadn’t known him when he was alive.
There would be a lot of beers downed this afternoon. The
guys would talk about Tobin, how much he liked to drink, the
crazy things he’d done, how he had ended up under the ice. Maybe
it would be good to hear all this, but I couldn’t handle it. I needed
to get home.
Most of all, I needed to tell Jessamyn before she heard it on
the street.

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 chapter 4

It’s about twenty minutes to Lake Placid, if you don’t get stuck
behind tourists. With my car heater blasting on high I had just
about stopped shivering by the time I got home. But I was still
cold, too cold to go looking for Jessamyn. I ran water in my tub,
as hot as I could stand it, and crawled in and lay there, all of me
submerged but my face, steam coming off the water, and thought
about Tobin, under the ice. My dog, Tiger, lay in the doorway
watching. She’s half German shepherd and half golden retriever,
and just about the best dog on the planet.
It seemed to take forever to warm up.
I toweled off and dressed as fast as I could, but I was moving
slowly, like in one of those dreams where you just can’t get any-
where. The walk up to town took longer than usual.
Jessamyn was working at a restaurant up on Main Street,
where she regularly had the weekend shift. Tourists come into
town determined to spend money, and they’re happy to drop it on
tips for a smiling waitress. And Jessamyn could play charm-the-
tourists as well as anyone.
This was your standard steak and seafood restaurant, with the
requisite Olympic kitsch: hanging ice skates and hockey sticks,
photos of ski jumpers and bobsledders. I kicked snow off my boots

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at the door and stamped more off in the foyer. It was the after-
noon lull before the dinner rush, and I saw Jessamyn refilling
coffee cups for a table of tourists and laughing as if they’d said
something incredibly witty. I waited until she headed back my
direction.
“Hey, Troy,” she said, surprised. “Did you want to eat?” She
knows I don’t often eat out, and if I do, it’s Desperados, where the
food is cheap and the service fast, or The Cowboy if someone’s
visiting from out of town.
I shook my head. “Can you take five minutes?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. She knew I wouldn’t be here if it
wasn’t important. She set down the coffeepot, told the cashier
she’d be right back, and grabbed her jacket.
Outside she crammed her gloveless hands into her pockets
and looked at me. There was no easy way to say this. I would
rather have told her at home, but word travels fast. Somewhere in
town somebody probably was already telling the story.
I took a deep breath, and spoke. “I was over in Saranac Lake
today—they started building the ice palace. They found a body in
the ice.”
Now her eyes shifted. I’d learned with her this didn’t always
mean she wasn’t telling the truth; sometimes it just meant she
was uncomfortable.
I made myself say the next words. “It was Tobin, Jessamyn.”
She seemed to stop breathing. She stared at me, eyes wide,
and swayed on her feet. I took a step toward her, but she righted
herself. Her face was chalk.
“You’re sure?” she whispered.
I nodded. She didn’t ask any questions. She just stood there
and breathed: in, out, in, out.
When Tobin had disappeared this last time, she had held out
hope for a long time that he would return as usual. But as weeks
turned into months, even she had given up. I think both of us had
assumed he’d gotten tired of playing Adirondacker. I’d pictured
him back at whatever posh home he had come from, living off

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 sara j. henry

family money or making the motions of going into Daddy’s busi-

ness, and frequenting bars more expensive and sophisticated than
here. I’d imagined he’d dropped the Carhartts and flannel shirts
into a Goodwill bin, or given them to the hired help.
Our breath formed little clouds.
“I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else,” I said. The
words were thin in the cold air.
“I need a drink,” she said.

She told her boss she was taking the evening off, and after one
look at our faces he knew not to protest. If Jessamyn was passing
up a prime winter Saturday evening slot, there was good reason.
He’d call in someone who’d be happy to take her shift and the fat
tips that came with it.
We walked down the street wordlessly, our feet crunching on
the packed snow. When we reached ZigZags, she opened the door,
and I followed her in. She nodded at the bartender; I’d seen him
around town but didn’t know his name. He served us efficiently,
refilling her glass when she gestured to it, and topped up my Diet
Coke without asking.
She didn’t cry; she just drank. She asked the bartender if he
had any cigarettes, and he handed her an open pack and didn’t say
anything about smoking not being allowed. There were no other
customers. She smoked four in fast succession, lighting one from
the butt of the other. I didn’t complain about the smoke. I didn’t
remind her how hard she’d told me it had been to quit. I just sat
there.
She spoke only once, and I had to lean in to hear her. “Damn
him,” she whispered. I didn’t know if she meant damn him for
dying, or damn him for things he’d done when he was alive. I
didn’t ask.
Eventually I went off to the bathroom, and on the way back
asked the bartender if he had any food—I figured that liquor and
shock weren’t a good combination on an empty stomach. I thought

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he might find some pretzels or nuts, but he came back with two
thick sandwiches on sturdy plates and sat them on the bar in front
of us. Maybe he’d heard about Tobin, or maybe he could just tell
when someone needed to have food set in front of them. Jessamyn
picked her sandwich up almost unseeingly and ate most of it, then
put it down and emptied her glass.
“Let’s go,” she said, and stood. She pulled some bills from her
pocket and dropped them on the bar. I caught the bartender’s eye
with a look that said If it’s not enough, let us know, and he nod-
ded. I grabbed my jacket and followed her outside.
It was snowing softly, the flakes falling on our faces and stick-
ing in our hair. Dusk was settling. We walked to the house in
silence. As Jessamyn turned to climb the stairs to her room, I saw
a tear trail down her cheek. Maybe she’d cry up there, or maybe
she’d just go to sleep. But I knew she needed to be alone.

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 chapter 5

It was past Tiger’s dinnertime, so I filled her bowl and left her in
the kitchen while I climbed the steep stairs that led to my rooms. I
have an outer room I use as an office, a tiny bathroom, and a small
bedroom, all nicely separate from the rest of the house. I turned on
my computer and clicked on my portable radiator. This is the only
heat up here, plus whatever makes its way up through the stairwell
and vents in the floor. But at night I have a down comforter and the
warm weight of Tiger in the crook of my knees, so I do all right.
I sat at my desk. I could feel the heat from the radiator, but
I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel numb. I wanted to forget the
grinding sound the block of ice with Tobin’s body had made as it
had slid past me, the grunts of the men struggling to move it into
the truck, the look on Jessamyn’s face when I’d told her the news.
And I wanted to forget that glimpse of Tobin Winslow’s face, fro-
zen into the ice.
But I couldn’t.
I pushed my camera’s memory card into my computer, let
Photoshop start uploading the photos, and turned away as they
began flashing past. I rummaged in my dresser for some thick
wool socks, pulled them on, and went down to the kitchen to brew
some tea. Then I climbed under my covers to warm up.

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There, while I sipped my tea, I realized I needed to talk to

someone. This still doesn’t come naturally to me. But I do have
people I can call: my brother, Simon, in Orlando, with his cool,
logical policeman’s brain. My friend Baker, in Saranac Lake,
with her kids and more routine life, always calm and pragmatic.
Alyssa, a reporter in Burlington who’d been there for the worse
parts of last summer. And Philippe, in Ottawa, whom I’d come
oh-so-close to falling for.
But it was Jameson I wanted to talk to.
He was a police detective in Ottawa I’d met after I’d dived from
a Lake Champlain ferry to rescue a small boy who turned out
to have been kidnapped, a small boy whose father was Philippe.
Jameson had seemed to consider me a prime suspect in the child’s
abduction, or at least an accomplice. He could be insufferably
rude; he was brusque and direct.
I trusted him absolutely.
Something was tickling the back of my mind, a memory of
the week Tobin disappeared, of seeing Jessamyn coming in the
kitchen with a fat lip and a stiff way of moving. Walked into
a door, she’d said. I hadn’t believed her. I’d once worked with a
woman who would come in with heavy makeup that didn’t quite
cover the bruises on her face—I fell off the porch, she’d say, or
something similar, and we would nod and pretend to believe her.
But in the afternoon roses would arrive from her husband, and I
knew that husbands don’t routinely send flowers whenever you’re
careless enough to fall off a porch.
The phone rang three times before he answered.
“Jameson,” he said, as he would at work.
“Hey, it’s Troy.”
Something changed on his end, as if he had shifted in his
chair. “Troy. How are you?”
“Something happened today,” I said. He knew I wouldn’t be
calling about something mundane, and I knew he’d want to hear
it from the beginning. So I told him about my roommate and the
guy she had dated, a guy who had disappeared regularly, who

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may have mistreated her, whose body had just been found frozen
in Lake Flower.
He listened without a word. “Fully dressed?” he asked when
I stopped.
I closed my eyes, and I could see the contorted figure in the
block of ice. One arm, off to the side, fingers splayed. A shiver ran
through me. “Yes. Coat. No hat. No gloves, at least on the hand
I saw.”
“He was a drinker?”
“Oh, yeah. And he smoked weed, I think. He never seemed
entirely sober.”
I’ve never seen the logic in drinking to excess—it makes peo-
ple act stupid and feel bad later. But plenty of locals drink hard
and regularly, and many vacationers seem to think it’s a require-
ment for stepping foot in town. More than once I’ve hollered out
my bedroom window at two a.m. at firemen here for a convention
and so drunk they couldn’t find their way back to their motel.
Maybe visiting horse-show people got plastered as well, but didn’t
wander the streets being loud about it. Maybe they sat around in
their trim riding jodhpurs and neat buttoned shirts and got qui-
etly, desperately, privately drunk.
Even I knew if someone had imbibed enough they might think
it a great idea to amble across a half-frozen lake. Alcohol seems to
go a long way toward convincing people they’re immortal.
“They’ll do an autopsy,” Jameson said. “Even the basics will
take a few days; tox screens take longer. Then they’ll likely know
if it’s anything besides him just falling through the ice. But
tell your roommate not to talk about this. To anyone. Not even
casually.”
“What about the police?”
Silence for a moment as he negotiated between his sense of
duty and what was best for Jessamyn. “She doesn’t want to im-
pede the investigation,” he said finally. “She should tell them
what’s relevant: when she saw him last, who his friends were,
but nothing that’s not facts—nothing they can misinterpret. Not
without a lawyer.”

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“Okay,” I said, and suddenly it was. Without me having to spell

it out he knew I was worried, and he knew why. If I had noticed
Jessamyn’s fat lip and pained way of walking, other people would
have too. It wouldn’t be a giant leap for someone to assume that
Tobin had been the one to hurt her, and that she might have decided
to do something about it. Because the Jessamyn before Tobin came
along wouldn’t have put up with anyone raising a hand to her.
“Let me know what they find out,” he said.
“I will,” I said, and hung up.
I did realize that on some level there was a thread of some-
thing deeper between Jameson and me, but neither of us seemed
to want or need to acknowledge it. Jameson was single, and that
was the extent of what I knew about his personal life. And of
course he knew how intertwined my life had been with Philippe’s
last summer after I’d rescued his son.
It was getting late, and had gotten colder. But I needed a walk,
and Tiger could use one. It’s one of the great things about dogs—
they’re always ready for an outing. I pulled on my wool-lined
Sorel boots, zipped up my parka, and wedged my neck warmer
under my hat so only my eyes and nose were exposed. This is my
secret to beating the cold: blocking the little crevices that let the
cold creep in. This, plus my puffy insulated gloves.
I didn’t bother with a leash, because Tiger always walks or
runs beside me. No credit to me; she was born that way, pre-
trained. I let her know what I wanted, and she’d do it. We headed
out past Town Hall and the police station and turned onto Mirror
Lake Drive for the three-mile loop around the lake.
I love this walk at night, especially in the winter. Almost no
one is out; the air is still; the snow and ice crunch underfoot. As
you move along you can forget the bad stuff that happened dur-
ing the day.
Or almost, anyway.

I don’t often have female roommates, because usually it’s guys

who show up looking for rooms. And guys are easier to live with.

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 sara j. henry

They don’t care if you don’t feel like talking and they don’t get
involved with your life, except around the edges. They never want
to make the house rules or take over running things, and they
don’t complain about the décor or much of anything.
But Jessamyn hadn’t been the typical female roommate. She
didn’t want to take over anything. She didn’t want to always be
doing things with me. She didn’t want to tell me her problems or
hear about mine, and she was tidier than most of the guys. Tobin
I’d seen a lot of, because he was often at the house, and nothing
had given me a reason to change my impression of him. Not that
I’d told Jessamyn. She hadn’t gotten where she was in life by lis-
tening to good advice. Few of us have.
As I walked I pictured Tobin, drunk or foolish or both,
crunching across the early winter ice of Lake Flower until he fell
through, or passing out or falling asleep, then sliding under as the
ice gave way. At least then, I thought, he would have been spared
the shock of plunging into the frigid water and that final awful
moment when he knew he wasn’t going to be able to save himself,
that today had been his last tomorrow.
Or he could have been ice diving. It’s crazy, but people do it.
I’d seen it during Winter Carnival—unofficial, of course. Some-
one dives through a circular hole cut into the ice, a rope tied to
one leg, and comes up through a second hole nearby, presumably
after drinking enough to decide it’s a good idea. Maybe Tobin had
missed the second hole and had no one to haul him out. Or tried it
without a rope, or the rope came loose, or his friends lost hold of
it. It would be a terrible secret to keep through the winter, waiting
for the body to be found. But because of Winter Carnival and the
vagaries of the lake, it had appeared sooner rather than later.
It didn’t yet cross my mind that someone might actually have
a reason for wanting Tobin gone.
My eyelashes were beginning to freeze. I broke into a jog,
taking choppy, short steps, all you can do in clunky boots on icy
ground. Tiger kept pace without missing a beat. I switched to
a brisk walk when I reached town, passing restaurants and gift

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 a co l d a nd l onely p l a c e

shops, the Olympic Center and then the speed-skating oval with
its skaters in tights and long blades, bent low, gliding around the
track.
In the kitchen, Brent glanced up and nodded. He was working
his way through a plateful of spaghetti and a paperback copy of
Of Human Bondage, a book I’ve never been able to make my-
self finish. Brent, like most of my athlete roommates, was quiet
and dedicated—a biathlete who spent long hours skiing, lifting
weights, and dry-firing his rifle at a tiny target taped on his bed-
room wall. He’d lived in the Olympic training center a while, but
I suspected there’d been too many boisterous bobsledders and
snowboarders for him.
I wondered if I should tell him Jessamyn’s boyfriend had been
found frozen in the ice of Lake Flower. But it’s a hard thing to
work into conversation: How’s your book? Say, did you hear Tobin
Winslow was found dead today? I nodded back at him and climbed
the stairs to my room.
I pulled on the sweatpants and old pullover I sleep in, and
thought about e-mailing or calling Philippe. But I didn’t feel
like talking, and this wasn’t something you could rattle off in an
e-mail. I’d tell him about it, but not now. I grabbed my favorite
Josephine Tey novel, and forced my eyes to follow the words until
I could go to sleep. It took a while.

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